Hugh Hewitt Doesn’t Care for Billionaires

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Hugh HewittCreditCreditPej Behdarvand for The New York Times

Interview by Ana Marie Cox

Jan. 28, 2016

When CNN announced that you would join the team moderating its Republican presidential debates, you justified your inclusion, despite being a partisan journalist, by saying that conservative-specific issues are not the standard issues we hear about. Do you think your presence has changed the debates? Yes. And the debates are working. They’re working very, very well, in fact. A very sophisticated group of voters is absorbing information. I compare it to the way you combat a serious illness. You accumulate information about the illness as you go along. The country’s really sick, so we’re getting a lot of information.

Is it cancer or diabetes? It’s cancer.

Do you think it’s going to require some radical steps? It’s going to require experimental treatment, innovation and an openness to new ideas and experts.

Right now, two outsiders are leading the polls in the Republican primary race. Do you think we could see a Trump-Cruz ticket? There’s no chance. They’re not going to like each other by the end of February. Ted was on my show yesterday, and he started to swing on Trump. When he starts to swing, that’s like Thor getting a hammer out.

You have interviewed a lot of people, and you have called Donald Trump one of the best interviews in the world. Yep. Interviews are about what draws audience.

But does being a good interview make you qualified to be commander in chief? Well, of course not. I mean, the best interview I’ve ever done is Richard Dreyfuss. Fascinating, smart and accomplished. And he’d be a terrible president.

Don’t you think Trump’s popularity has more to do with his being a good interview than it does with his being qualified to actually run the country? He’s succeeding for two reasons: Not only is he wildly entertaining and interesting — in an age when entertainment and interest matter a great deal to the presidential campaign — he also gets things done. Everyone knows what the problems are, but nobody gets anything done. There’s a slice of America that’s tired of this.

If he’s such a good communicator, don’t you think he should be doing something about some of the rather ugly displays of enthusiasm at his rallies? I don’t think Donald Trump owns everyone at the rallies. I’m reminded of Dick Tuck. He was a master at dirty tricks and hoaxes. Unless I investigate every event, I never have an opinion on it, because I’m just so cynical. I know the record.

You believe that Trump might have agents provocateurs at his rallies? Yeah, it could all be staged. Everything could be staged.

Most Americans think we should raise taxes on the rich, but the Republican candidates don’t, except Trump, who has said he would consider it. I asked him about a wealth tax, and he said no. But I find that concentration of wealth in Silicon Valley deeply disturbing. Those billionaires are very smart, but they moved to Silicon Valley at the right time. Someone was going to invent Facebook. I’m glad Mark Zuckerberg did it, but it wasn’t an act of genius; it’s an act of timing. Should he have tens of billions of dollars?

That’s a pretty radical position for a conservative. I don’t think it’s very good for the society to have billionaires. It creates envy. And envy destroys republics.

So you’d say to the Silicon Valley elite, ‘‘You didn’t build that.’’ No. They did build it. I would say, You should keep an enormous amount of money for your entrepreneurial ability and your success. But there is a limit in America to how much any one person is going to have. You don’t need 10 billion dollars. Nobody does. The country does.

You started out working for Nixon, and your specialty was endangered-species law. Does that make you well placed to help protect the more moderate, establishment conservative? Ha! We’re not an endangered species.

Interview has been condensed and edited.

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A version of this article appears in print on , on Page 62 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Hugh Hewitt Doesn’t Care for Billionaires. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe